REPORTING AND ANALYSIS

POWERFUL REPORT WRITER

The Aplicor Query Tool is a simple and intuitive aid which allows users to quickly and easily create their own queries and simple reports. A point-and-click browser-based interface allows non-technical users to retrieve, format and display their own custom reports without outside technical assistance. Reports can be changed and re-run 'on the fly' allowing the user to easily fine-tune the report content and appearance.

• Guided report development wizards and links to Aplicor's Query Tools
• Drag-and-drop placement of report objects in the browser layout window
• Global libraries for report templates, queries and Parameter Panel
• Private and public reports based on permissions/ publishing rules
• Properties control of every data element on the report
• The Report Writer supports both on-demand (pull) and event-based (push) delivery of reports. Users can view reports in a Web-based format or in e-mail
• Access to multiple data sources across the enterprise via your browser
• SQL validation window with forward look to SQL Count, SQL optimization and fast "what if" analysis
• Saves reports in industry standard RDL (Report Definition Language) format. Exports to many other formats such as Excel and PDF

The Aplicor Report writer enables Aplicor users to transform valuable enterprise data into shared information for insightful, timely decisions.

BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE (BI) FOR DECISION SUPPORT AND ANALYSIS

The advantages of an Aplicor BI data warehouse should come as no surprise, for if the organization has a wealth of information about its customers and its business, it will be in a position to make better decisions about growing that business.

WHAT MAKES APLICOR BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE SUPERIOR?

• First, we focus on the user, not on the technology
• Second, we deliver turnkey BI templates and models that are flexible, configurable & immediately available
• Third, we make accessing and using information as simple as possible

Sales, marketing and customer service are multidimensional. You think about sales, marketing and services multi-dimensionally - flipping and rearranging the dimensions of the markets, products and salespeople to show new trends and gain new insights: revenues across regions, regions over time, actual vs. plan comparisons across salespeople and much more. But typically, the query and reporting tools are two-dimensional. Aplicor BI can provide the freedom to think beyond the narrow limits of simple reports and spreadsheets and to work the way you think.

Aplicor BI enables sales and service professionals and managers to obtain snapshots of any part of their customers, products, services, competitors, pricing and more to see the big picture, to understand the history and trends in the information, and to use that information to support better decision making. Typical sales and marketing BI scenarios include revenue modeling, quota achievement, pricing and ordering scenarios, budgeting, pipeline analysis or sales forecasting by salesperson, territory or product line. Sales managers can view strategic functions such as price elasticity (when products are too cheap or too expensive due to the net affect on sales), view when expenses are out of line with revenue, push additional efforts or resources toward higher margin products and services or quickly identify less profitable deals or customers.

BI enables sales managers or salespeople to model their plans and ideas on their desktop. As their models take shape, they can easily import data and see the impact. Once the model has been perfected, it can be published for the sales, marketing or services teams or made available to users across the organization. An Aplicor BI model can replace the practice of building 5 or 10 sales and marketing related spreadsheets and achieve a single data mart to represent all the spreadsheets. Not only is the data processing speed increased and rekeying time reduced with an Aplicor BI data mart, but data integrity is realized and the sales team can spend their time analyzing information instead of getting data.

Is Aplicor Busines Intelligence Right For You?

If you can relate to any of these problems, you may benefit from a data warehouse:

• Difficulty in pulling information from multiple sources to generate meaningful, accurate and timely management reports.
• Managers or analysts spending more time collecting data than analyzing it
• High-end sales managers and staff who have become spreadsheet clerks
• Data has to be re-keyed to provide analysis and insight into a problem or opportunity area of the business
• Decisions stall because of conflicting data or the disagreement about the reliability of the data
• The accuracy and integrity of spreadsheet models comes into question; security is almost impossible to guarantee
• Spreadsheet models which are difficult to change and take forever to consolidate
• You feel like you are going through a fire drill whenever you have to perform an ad hoc inquiry or get specific information out of a system

Simply putting more data into a repository does not alter productivity or impact the bottom line. Making the system simple is key to getting corporate information out of the repositories and into the hands of the marketing, sales and customer support decision-makers. The data warehouse should make it easy to find, view and manipulate information. Sales and marketing managers understand the way their business is structured, not the structure of the database. Aplicor BI presents data in business terms (ex; why are sales down for a particular product line, in the central region, for the 4th quarter?). Aplicor BI eliminates the need to perform complex SQL queries, empowering sales and marketing professionals to access and explore data relevant to their jobs.